I notice that the moon must have passed very close to Mars a few hours ago, and it was the same last week with Jupiter. So it occurs to me, do planets ever get obscured by the moon? I would expect that if you knew that, for example, Saturn was about to disappear behind the moon for half an hour, that would be something people would want to watch. Especially if, as would be the case most of the time, the moon was dark on one edge, so that you’d see the planet quickly blinking out or in.
The media are always going on about the moon, Mars or Jupiter being slightly brighter than usual, but I don’t remember this ever being mentioned in all my years. My guess is that it’s something that’s statistically very rare - if that’s the case I’d be interested in some intuitive insight into why, given how wide the moon’s path is on the map of where solar system objects move in the sky.
Well there really isnt much more. Maybe it has some meaning in astrology but its a fairly common occurance to have the moon block a single planet since the planets in the solar system are close to being in the same plane.
And the NYT let me read the story once. But no more.
And it’s not really all that interesting to watch. How many stayed up Monday night to watch the eclipse? (I did.) I suspect that it would be a small fraction of those who would watch an occultation.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard it mentioned on TV media, but some of the science and astronomy channels I watch mention them from time to time.
But does anyone have any free to view information about dates and times of occultations in the recent past or near future, which includes info about the phase of the moon at the time?
There’s going to be another one for Mars next month, although for much of the East Coast and South, it’ll be a very near miss. There’s a map at this site showing where it’ll be visible from.
The Mars one next month is the sort of thing I’m interested in. However it looks like the moon will be nearly full, which will make it less exciting as Mars will be less visible and you won’t notice the dark part of the moon covering it.
I notice that there don’t seem to be mentions of Saturn or Jupiter being occulted, which brings me back to the OP: does their plane or something mean that they only pass directly behind the moon twice in 43276 years or whatever?
Also, I didn’t realise that such occultations are very localised, which goes most of the way towards explaining why media don’t get excited, or even told, about them the way they do about supermoons and stuff.
Sure, but I’ve seen loads of lunar eclipses, even when I didn’t know they were going to happen. Last week if it had looked like Jupiter was about to blink out behind the dark half of the moon, I would have stopped to watch it and I think I could have got other people interested.
You have? I’ve seen a few, but I always stayed up specifically for it. I suppose if you are just up and outside all night most nights, you’d catch some by accident.
I think they’re kinda cool, how that last glimmer of light disappears off the edge of the moon, your eyes refocus, and now you see a blood red moon in the sky. There actually is an effect that is highly noticeable in both the sky and the ground.
OTOH, unless you are looking through a telescope, Jupiter just looks like a really bright star, and you see stars going behind the moon all the time.
Coincidentally, i first heard of these phenomena this week from the
Daily Telegraph’s resident astronomer.
There’s another Mars one on Jan 31 2023 which is a half-moon.
When I say loads, I mean some, but enough so that I tend not to bother watching them if I know they’re happening. I did once see one unexpectedly when I was baked, which created 0.75 seconds of feeling like I was on something stronger. I disagree about Jupiter looking like a really bright star - someone will correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think there are any stars on the ecliptic which approach the 4 brightest planets for brightness. If there are, then I’d be interested to know when their occultations will be as well.
They aren’t so rare that I go massively out of my way, or are disappointed if it is overcast, but if it happens to be convenient, it’s pretty cool.
I’m not sure what you are disagreeing with me on here. I didn’t say that Jupiter wasn’t any brighter than a star, I said it looked like a really bright star. In that there is no disk that can be resolved with the naked eye, no detail, it’s just a point of light in the sky. A bright point of light to be sure, but still just a point of light.
I watched the occultation of Venus some years ago. It started just before sunrise with a waning crescent moon, as the moon moved from right to left over where Venus was. At one point Venus was like a dot on the crescent of the moon before Venus disappeared behind the moon.
The most interesting part was listening to the atomic clock time signal to accurately find when Venus would reappear and compare that to published predictions. It was now after sunrise and the moon was still visible in the morning sky, but the sky was too bright to see the entire disk of the moon. Right on cue all of a sudden Venus emerged from behind the dark portion of the moon. The effect was that Venus suddenly blinked on, which was kind of amazing to me; I’m sure I said “Cool!”